To Those Who Want to Know Why
by Regina Raptorum
Summary: "Found in the papers of the late Inspector Abberline." One shot, spoilers. Please RR.


**Author's Note:** I'd been meaning to do this for a while, since it's pretty much inevitable after the way the movie ended. I was watching it again, and figured now was as good a time as any. (And maybe getting this out of the way will motivate me to get back to that LoZ fic that's been languishing over there. ) So, enjoy a somewhat depressing look into the mind of the hapless Inspector Abberline.

The fanfic muse feeds on reviews, please feed the muse.

Also, none of the characters or the movie The Wolfman itself belong to me, and I'm not making any money off of this. So please to not sue.

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><p>I expect they'll say this is the inevitable result of nerves, or that the Talbot case and the injuries I recieved unhinged me. God knows I saw enough to unhinge even the most unimaginative man, at that ill-fated asylum in London, and that cold, crumbling peice of hell in Blackmoor. Though no one would believe me save the backward villagers near Talbot Hall and one or two men that were with me that night. And of course, Miss Conliffe. But I should be shut up just as that poor devil Lawrence Talbot was if I said anything. Even the men who saw what happened in London have largely ignored what they saw in favor of sanity. And none save the woman was there at the very last and saw the thing in all its horror.<p>

Probably they will say that I am mad. That is as it must be. The world at large is unprepared to believe in certain things. I am leaving this account for the few who will not accept that, or who desire to know the reasoning behind my actions. If I am mad, it is the same madness that turned Lawrence Talbot into a fiend.

"There is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."

I expect I should have let it go, once Talbot was in custody and confined to the madhouse. The murderer of Blackmoor was safely confined. I _should_ have been satisfied with that. I had, after all, suspected him from the moment I arrived. But for some reason, I wasn't satisfied. Perhaps it was because Sir John Talbot smelled like a wrong 'un to me. It wasn't anything I could have put my finger on, but he wasn't right. Maybe it was that he acquiesced too easily when I arrested his only surviving son as a lunatic murderer. Maybe it was because the villagers swore that Talbot Hall had always been cursed, even before Lawrence Talbot's time. Or maybe it was the simple fact that there had been three murders _before_ Lawrence Talbot had come to Blackmoor from London.

...Upon consideration, I think it was actually that the dire whispers of the villagers and the gypsies, coupled with the sheer savagery of the murders, made an impression despite my then-ironclad skepticism.

I went to the asylum on the night of the full moon, to see the demonstration of the impossibility of Talbot's 'mania.' I'm not sure why. I expect I was hoping that it would be just as the doctor had said, that absolutely nothing would happen and that Talbot was merely possessed by a particularly violent delusion.

Of course, that's not what happened in the slightest. Any man who made it out of that room alive that night can attest to that, though many of those refuse to acknowledge what really happened, and swear that Talbot, possessed by the fury of a madman, broke his restraints and murdered the orderly and the doctor before action could be taken. They swear to it so much that they've convinced themselves, and those that haven't have gone mad.

The slaughter at the asylum, and his subsequent rampage through London left no doubt in the mind of the public that Talbot was an utter fiend, and indeed, he may have been possessed by one. But I am willing to admit now what I could not then, that Lawrence Talbot _as a man_ never meant any harm to anyone, save the one who was the true monster. I remember the fear in his eyes that night, and I remember the way he begged for someone, anyone, to kill him before it was too late.

The tragedy that night happened because no one did. We were all blinded by the marvels of science and ingrained disbelief until it was far too late to stop it.

I didn't have the time that night to think about it properly, or to peice the story together. There was too much to be done in an effort to merely contain the threat, and no resources available to understand it. It was Miss Conliffe who supplied the missing peices later; she and I had seen the most of the horror, and it bound us together. She told me because she thought I had a right to know, and that Talbot would have wanted me to understand why things were as they were.

I have called Lawrence Talbot a fiend, and that is true, though it was through no real fault of his own. However, he was not as bad as he could have been. Indeed, he was not so bad as the one who made him into what he became. Lawrence Talbot killed indescriminately, but he_ killed. _None of his victims survived to suffer. None save myself, and I fortunately have the strength of will to take certain steps. And I think he'd have finished me as well, had he not been so focused on Miss Conliffe.

But his _father_, ah, now, that's a different matter. He was a monster himself, and the greater one than Talbot. Where Lawrence Talbot begged to be put down before he could cause more harm, Sir John Talbot let himself run amok. And if Lawrence Talbot was a monster, it was Sir John who made him so, and moreover, I believe he did it intentionally, to draw attention away from his own crimes.

I suppose I must come out and say it, though anyone reading this cannot have failed to guess my meaning. Lawrence Talbot was a true monster, and there is corroboration of a sort, if one listens to the doctors and students who went mad after the slaughter at the asylum. And, of course, as the legends say, the bite of that monster turns the victim who survives it into more the same. Lawrence Talbot was bitten by the monster that was his father, and he in turn became a monster.

I was bitten by the monster that was Lawrence Talbot, but I will _not_ become a monster.

I had the silver sword-cane I had picked up in Talbot Hall before the flames overcame it, and I gave thought to using it that night, once the beast had been put down. But I hesitated, thinking that my men would prevent me from carrying out my design, and that could be fatal. Later Miss Conliffe told me that there had been a month's grace between the night that Talbot was attacked, and the night he first changed. From one full moon to the next. Time enough to get my affairs in order.

They thought it odd when I kept the rounds of silver bullets I had commissioned when we were hunting Talbot. Perhaps they thought it odd when I commissioned them as well, but things were fresher in their minds and certain scenes hadn't been blotted out in the interests of continued health and reason. I kept the silver sword, too, as a 'souvenier', I said. I can barely stand to handle either now, but I won't let that stop me. They say that only silver can kill what I'm to become, and though I haven't become it yet, I'm taking no chances. Because even if all I saw was sheer hallucination, and even if what Miss Conliffe said to me were lies told her by a delusional and dangerous lunatic, there are certain _indications_. A sharpening of the senses, and nightmares of the most incredible sort. If it is madness, its grip on me is only growing stronger.

But I do not think it is madness.

Tomorrow night is the full moon, the next full moon after the murderer Lawrence Talbot was killed and Talbot Hall burned.

I have asked Miss Conliffe to call on me in the morning. She will, I think, not be surprised by what she finds, and will see to it that this and other papers arrive in the proper hands. I am sorry to ask a lady to do such a thing; if I could, a man from the Yard would be better. But as I said... we are bound together by what we saw that night. And she has a right to know it's over.

She already knows why.

- Inspector Fredrick Abberline


End file.
